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February VRM Hub meeting last night

…was really good fun. We all gathered at Google reception in Victoria, signed away our nth-borns NDA, got badged and taken up to the meeting room by ever-vigilant googlers in a set up reminiscent of under-cover operations. Many thanks to Ben for letting a herd of VRMers into the non-evil Google lair and providing us with water to moisten our throats dry from all the talking. After a whirlwind session of ideas and challenging questions, we ‘retired’ to the nearby pub where the conversations continued. Ideas were shared, connections made and good foundations laid for the next meeting.

There was a very eclectic bunch of people and the topics discussed ranged from marketing and advertising to technical implementation of data sharing in VRM context and the basic aspects of VRM infrastructure. It was great to have Doc present and may he be in London many a time in the coming months. The need for a messianic bearded individual was expressed and it was felt that Doc fits the bill perfectly, despite his protests.

One of the outcomes of the meeting was connecting with a couple of geeks/coders willing to sit down and help to translate the vision of VRM personal data space into technical specs and hopefully a prototype to demonstrate what we have been trying to describe since the VRM brainstorming session at IIW in Mountain View last December.

Together with Alec we were able to do that with VRM feeds based data sharing, but now we need to move onto the lightweight tools for personal data capture, analysis and management (working name u-spot and after discussions last night likely to change to MINE. )

The next VRM Hub meeting is scheduled for 27th March, sign up here. We are on a look out for venue, so far we met in a wine bar and in an office. Ideally, we need something in between – a space we can both hang out and drink wine/beer/etc as well as sit down, open a laptop and take discussions further – I call it 3Ws – wi-fi, wine, whiteboard. There are already some ideas and suggestions, which are most welcome. And as the meetings grow in scope, I am sure there will be more.

Note: A reminder for those who blog or post photos about the event to use two tags VRM and VRMUK. Thanks.

8 Responses to “February VRM Hub meeting last night”

I was almost going to put my name down on your list to attend, but it would have been a wasted journey – I wouldn’t have signed an NDA.

It is a little ironic that those in pursuit of a better relationship between customer and vendor meet at a venue where they are required to tolerate their host’s completely inegalitarian contract in place of the respectful trust, discretion and confidence that normally occurs in a conversation.

Let us not first submit ourselves to the whim’s of the vendor’s lawyers as their prerequisite to any conversation. No terms and conditions. No disclaimers. No NDAs. No prenuptial agreements. Just a meeting of minds. A potential exchange of goods. With no hidden or post-purchase contracts.

A free loan of a horse may though – if the lender needs assurance of its safe return. But then such a horse is not a gift and so needs looking in the mouth if a condition of the loan requires good care, and the caring recipient wishes to estimate risks of expensive dental treatment.

Thanks a lot for organising it all, Adriana. You’ve assembled a real super-group of UK net minds and I felt privileged to be a part.

Space: not so good – and I know you struggled with this and that Ben really helped out a lot. Just not so good for real discussion – the pub chat was so much better. But that’s always the case with our own panel events – the after-event is always the best bit!

Ian, thanks for feedback. As you can see from the wiki, the idea has always been a place where we can do both – sit down around a table/laptop/whiteboard and have a drink or just a chat about VRM. It is hard to find both of these and I am still looking. I have a good idea of what we need and will know when I see it.

I do think that the discussion around the table was excellent and would be impossible to have in a pub, which was noisy and not so good for delving deeper. I believe that it was mainly because we have had such an intense, if a bit working meeting like, discussion beforehand that we managed to connect so well later on. I just want to strike a better balance between the two end of the specture – office and a pub.

We need a semi-private space somewhere in Central London, wine bar might do for now but I suspect that people will want to take this further and get ‘working’ on some ideas together. And that’s one of the objectives of the VRM Hub meetings too.

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